So we don’t like to give guidance beyond a year. But if you look at that trajectory that we’re on, if you go into ’25, the choiceful exits that we’re making should be behind us by the time we get into ’25. And so that is unlikely to be a headwind for ’25. At the same time, it’s hard to predict what’s happening in the categories, but I think a lot of the outside experts would suggest that the category growth rate may turn more positive in ’25, and we expect our capabilities to be even stronger heading into ’25 versus where they are today. And so I mentioned that in ’23, we grew market share on eight of our top 25 brands. We think we’ve got line of sight to do that on about half of our market of our top 25 brands in ’24, and I expect we’re going to grow market share on more than half of our top brands in ’25.
And so we see a path for significant financial improvement. We see a path back to sustainable and profitable growth. We said when we unveiled the new strategy that this was going to be a multi-year journey because of the capabilities that needed to be built on the front end. But I can tell you inside the company that the capabilities we’re building on innovation, on brand building, on new business development, on go-to-market, on international, the changes that we’re making in the operating model, the talent upgrade, the clarity of the strategy, all of those things are in place and starting to contribute. And we think we’re on that trajectory. The thing that is a little bit more uncertain is what happens to the rate of market growth. We’ve tried to be prudent in our forecast in our guidance by saying it’s going to be down low single digits is our assumption for this year.
I will say it’s early days, but just looking at the January results, we’re running a little bit ahead of our plan in the month of January, but we’re not going to get ahead of ourselves based on one month and January is a light month.
William Chappell: Got it. And I guess just to follow-up, I mean, how do you take something like Baby that was down double-digits probably as a category last year and you’re kind of probably forecasting in mid-single digits this year. I mean, I don’t think the birth rate has changed that much. I don’t think your market share has changed that much. I mean, how do you look at these, your core categories, should they be normalizing and getting back to kind of pre-pandemic trends in ’24? Or is it just, we’re taking as we see it. And until that happens, we’re just going to assume it looks more like 2023?
Chris Peterson: Yes. I think they’re going to normalize a little bit in ’24, but our view from an overall macro standpoint is that the consumer remains under pressure because of inflation. And you have to, although in the headlines, you see a lot of commentary about consumer spending holding up very well, which is true. A lot of that consumer spending is being directed to either Services spending or Essentials, which is food and essential categories. And most of the forward-looking people that we get data from would suggest that durable and discretionary categories although there, the market growth rate is projected to improve versus ’23, it’s still likely to remain under pressure in ’24. I will say that if you talk to those same external people, which we do a lot, most of them are predicting that, that’s going to change when we get into ’25 and even more so into ’26 although it’s hard to predict that far out.
And so we’re trying to be prudent. We’re trying to take the things that are in our control. You mentioned the Baby category, which was particularly negatively impacted in ’23 because of the Bed Bath & Beyond and buybuy BABY bankruptcy. One of the things that we’re doing with our new business development team is we are expanding and opening up new retail customers into that Baby channel with Graco as the lead brand. And so we’re pretty excited about what you’re going to see going forward. We can’t say too much about it right now, but there are things that we are doing to try to get the category back to growth that I think are going to help market growth and help Newell’s market share at the same time. We also have an opportunity in that business to expand a little bit more internationally, because we’re very U.S. centric, and there’s a lot of babies outside the U.S., a lot more outside the U.S. than there are inside the U.S. And so we have a couple of exciting country launches planned in that business already for ’24.
William Chappell: Got it. Thanks so much for the color.
Chris Peterson: Thank you.
Operator: Your next question comes from Lauren Lieberman of Barclays.
Lauren Lieberman: Great. Thanks. Good morning everyone. Was just curious to talk a little bit about general merchandise trends in the U.S. We’ve had retailers call out some deflationary trends in the category, which of course would be a very broad category, so I know it’s difficult to generalize. So just curious kind of what you’re seeing and how you’re thinking about pricing dynamics? Whether it’s a step-up in promotional activity that may be encouraged by retailers to kind of drive a little bit more activity this year in the U.S.?
